In other Minecraft news, Microsoft says the game will “get more powerful on mobile.”

MinecraftEDU released its latest – and its last – update, version 1.7.10. “It is critically important that customers using the MinecraftEdu Hosting Service install this new version on their computers and update their servers immediately. Older versions of MinecraftEdu will no longer be able to connect and play after 30 June 2016.” MinecraftEDU was acquired by Microsoft back in January.

Code.org has published a letter and a Change.org petition to Congress calling for $250 million in federal funding for computer science education. Corporate leaders have signed and the tech press have dutifully spread the PR, so it must be a “thing.”

Via Education Week: “House Members Introduce Bill to Overhaul Career and Technical Education.”

Everyone Should Learn to Code Law School

Via The New York Times: “A jury in San Diego on Thursday rejected claims by a law graduate, Anna Alaburda, that the Thomas Jefferson School of Law enticed her to enroll by using misleading graduate employment figures. In the first – and perhaps last – such case to reach the courtroom, Ms. Alaburda, 37, argued that the school reported a higher percentage of its graduates landed jobs after graduation than was actually the case, and that she relied on the bogus data to choose to attend the school.”

The Skills Gap

Via ZDNet: “The Brazilian government is relaunching one of its flagship schemes, the National Program for Access to Technical Education and Employment (Pronatec). Pronatec is focused on low-income young Brazilians and has played an important role in creating entry-level skills to fill the country’s existing expertise gap in the IT sector.”

The New Economy

The latest Pew Research study looks at the public’s predictions about the automation of work: “A majority of Americans predict that within 50 years, robots and computers will do much of the work currently done by humans – but few workers expect their own jobs or professions to experience substantial impacts.”

Via TPM: “Wisconsin’s right-to-work law, championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker as he was mounting his run for president, was struck down Friday as violating the state constitution.”

The Business of Job Training

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has joined the Board of Directors of the skills training company Pluralsight. (He’s also a VC at the Emerson Collective, an investment firm run by Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs.)

OK, it’s not a coding bootcamp. (OR IS IT!?) But via The LA Times: “In Santa Monica, parents are paying $1,000 for a boot camp to get their kids ready for kindergarten.”

And via Inside Higher Ed: “The U.S. Department of State and massive open online course provider Coursera are partnering to launch Coursera for Refugees, a program to offer career training to displaced people around the world. The program will focus on nonprofits that help refugees, which will be able to apply for fee waivers to access the Coursera course catalog.”

“Should for-profit crash courses get federal funds?” asks The Economist in an article about coding bootcamps. I mean, for-profit higher ed has such a stellar track record. What could possibly go wrong?

From Course Report: “the 2016 Coding Bootcamp Market Size Study.” Among the findings: “In 2016, the sheer number of bootcamp providers has grown to 91, compared to 67 last year.” “Average tuition price of qualifying courses is $11,451, with an average program length of 12.9 weeks. This is compared with averages of $11,063 and 10.8 weeks in 2015.”

Via Techcrunch: “Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses.” I look forward to the opinion pieces on how Workplace by Facebook will replace the LMS.

Via Venture Beat: “Xavier Niel explains 42: the coding university without teachers, books, or tuition” (or students over age 30).

Via Techcrunch: “Coding school 42 plans to educate 10,000 students in Silicon Valley for free.” Only those between the age of 18 and 30 need apply. There are no teachers. But Techcrunch covered it, so you know it’s legit.

Via Edsurge: “CareerBuilder and Capella Learning Systems have announced they will jointly launch Rightskill, a program that will engage participants in a 90-day training focused on mobile web development.”

Via Techcrunch: “Flatiron School teams up with Re:Coded to help Syrian refugees learn to code.”

Via Inside Higher Ed: “The first audits of the employment data that law schools report about their recent graduates have generated concern among watchdogs, with a series of reviews finding several deficiencies that raise questions about the class of 2015's reported outcomes.”

“Can You Buy a New Job?” asks Bloomberg, with an interview with General Assembly’s Jake Schwartz.

Inside Higher Ed’s Carl Straumsheim offers some more details on the “next steps” for the Udacity/Georgia Tech MOOC masters, which hasn’t seen as high an enrollment as the hype man once predicted. Random factoid from the article: each course costs Georgia Tech $350,000 to develop – it’s not clear if that figure includes Udacity’s contributions or not.

Via the AP: “Rivier University, which has a total student population of about 2,600 in Nashua, has created an ‘Employment Promise Program’ that will be available to full-time undergraduates starting with the class of 2020. Students are guaranteed to land a job within nine months of graduation, or the school will either pay their federally subsidized students loans for up to a year or enroll them in up to six master’s degree courses tuition-free.”

Inside Higher Ed has a story on Amazon’s employee training program, once again using the phrase “open source” even though this has nothing to do with open source. Nice branding move from Amazon, who seemingly wants to openwash all the things.

“Udacity wants to help you become a self-taught self-driving car engineer,” says Techcrunch. (How are you “self-taught” if you pursue a nanodegree program? I do not know.)

From the press release: “Sabio, a Los Angeles-based software engineering program, works with highly motivated and smart individuals wanting to transition to software engineering professions, has been approved by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education.”

Edsurge reports that Udacity has expanded into China, making “100 free computer science courses available at youdaxue.com to aspiring Chinese developers and providing localized support for its ‘nanodegree’ program.” The company has also launched a local “career focused meetup service” called UConnect in San Francisco, LA, and New York.

Udacity has launched a nanodegree program in self-driving car engineering. Edsurge has more details – including this tidbit on Udacity’s money-back guarantee for job placement, something that doesn’t apply to the self-driving car program: “While attractive, Udacity’s promise flirts with flouting rules set by California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, which state that institutions ‘shall not promise or guarantee employment.’” (In related self-driving car regulation news: “Google’s ‘Cozy’ Relationship With Driverless-Car Regulators.” Food for thought about how some folks hope this works in higher ed, no?)

Reuters reports that “Online education firm Udacity looks beyond tech sector.” From the story: “Online education company Udacity plans to branch out of its core technology market to meet growing demand for digitally-skilled workers in areas such as banking and the car industry, its co-founder told Reuters as the company launched in Germany.”

From the Pew Research Center: “The State of American Jobs.” There are some interesting insights here on how those surveyed view continuing education – 54% say it’s essential.

Degreed released a study on professional development, and – shocking, I know – the findings are quite different from Pew’s. Here’s the headline from the tech-business publication Quartz: “Companies are so bad at helping workers develop their careers, most are training themselves.” (No mention of the Pew study in that write-up, even though the same writer had covered the story just two days before. Because journalism!)

Bootcamps

Also via Inside Higher Ed: “Traditional colleges including Northeastern University and Bellevue College are entering the coding boot camp market by partnering with boot camp providers or by creating their own programs.”

“Employees at community colleges may be the most affected by the Obama administration’s new rules for overtime pay, especially as the sector continues to see dwindling resources from their states,” says Inside Higher Ed.

“No End in Sight to Strike by Harvard’s Cafeteria Workers Over Wages,” The New York Times reports. The workers are demanding a salary of $35,000 per year, which the richest university in the world – one with an endowment of $37.6 billion – appears unwilling to pay.

Inside Higher Ed highlights anti-union university websites from the likes of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. In other anti-union bullshit from people you should never listen to: “Grad student unionization will negatively impact credit,” says Moody’s.

After laying off 1000 employees last week, the Chicago Public Schools is now looking to hire – you guessed it – 1000 teachers.

Also via The Chronicle: a judge has thrown out a lawsuit against the NCAA that asserted college athletes should be paid at least the minimum wage.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics says it may explore ways to allow players to profit off their names and likenesses, though some members argue too few athletes would benefit from such a change.” (The article features a photo of Arne Duncan – a reminder that the former Secretary of Education now works for the Knight Commission, as well as for the venture firm Emerson Collective.)

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “They seemed like sensible changes: giving big-time college athletes, many of whom spend more than 40 hours a week on their sports, a true day off per week – certain hours when coaches couldn't make them practice – and more downtime after the season. But the ideas, part of a package of new rules proposed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, did not come up for a vote at the association's annual convention here on Friday. Instead, leaders of the five most powerful conferences resolved to vote on the measures next year, with the possibility of introducing a more comprehensive set of changes.” More via Inside Higher Ed.

Also via Edsurge: “Sizing Up Your Skills – How You Can Get a Job in the Edtech World.”

Lots of sponsoredcontent over at Edsurge that will “help you become a successful teacherpreneur.” No mention of the layoffs happening across venture-backed startups or for-profit endeavors like UofP. But hey. According to Siliconvalley.com, “Bay Area job market evolves: ‘Soft’ tech jobs in, manufacturing out.”

Chicago-based startup The Graide Network lets teachers outsource grading via a marketplace for “on demand teaching assistants.” Sounds totally legit and not at all like a FERPA or HR violation. Details on the startup via ChicagoInno.

Via Bright: “How the sharing economy is creating a marketplace for cheating.”

Edsurge looked at the gendered pay inequality at education non-profits in June, noting that the median male salary at the Clayton Christensen Institute, was $143,000; the media female salary was $112,300. (From this article, I learned that Sal Khan earns more than $540,000 a year. Because “non-profit” and “mission-driven.”)